Through 39 missions going over 27 years the Discovery shuttle became an icon in American spacefaring, spending a cumulative 365 days in space. Fittingly for ship named in honor of Captain James Cook’s seagoing vessel on his third voyage into the unknown, the Discovery also helped humankind to further expand its boundaries with countless scientific experiments and the ferrying of crew to the International Space Station. And it all started with a short flight of STS-41D.

On this day, August 30, in 1984 the Discovery space shuttle made its maiden voyage, carrying three communications satellites into orbit and conducting an experiment on crystal growth in microgravity.

The Discovery takeoff was filmed in IMAX cameras for a 1985 short feature called The Dream is Alive. It would not be the only film appearance of the shuttle: she also made a cameo in Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, in which she boosted the Autobots’ spacecraft Xantium during their exile from Earth, but Starscream shot her down and destroyed her. Nevertheless, the Discovery is already scheduled to appear in Transformers 3.